environment – Between Hell and High Water

Fifty Years of Environmental Avoidance

By Mike Koetting August 4, 2026

I recently ran across an article contending that the 1972 Limits to Growth projections about environmental threats were on track. That reminded me that when these were first published, my friend Rick Casey, then at the National Catholic Reporter, commissioned me to write a review. Although long since moved on, he was able to track down the review for me.

Turns out, it held up fairly well. But, before that….

The Limits to Growth

The publication, Limits to Growth, was the outgrowth of computer-generated models by a group of MIT scientists. It attracted considerable attention because both the technology and the findings were then novel. (Hard as it is to imagine, there was a time in my life when computer modeling was a novelty.)

The model made projections of five systems—agricultural production, industrial output, population, non-renewable resource consumption and pollution—and their interaction effects. The conclusions were dismal. They predicted the net effects of these trends unmoderated from then current trends would result in some kind of system breakdown around 2050. They specifically warned, however, there would be a long run up that looked like everything was under control, but as we got closer to one crisis or another, it would be more difficult to moderate trends because the phases leading up to crisis would accelerate exponentially. It was the scientific equivalent of Hemmingway’s observation on how you go bankrupt. “Gradually. Then suddenly.”

The slow-motion approach to collapse complicates evaluating the models’ accuracy since the key-point is when the trends change direction. Over the years since then, the trends continued close to the original projections. (Renewable resources have depleted more slowly than modeled through the development of new technologies—such as fracking—allowing more extraction. The authors of the original study had acknowledged this was a possibility, but observed this would create different problems, which they in fact have.) However, none of this “proves” the trends will turn when the models say they will, although, in truth, the original authors never claimed these were exact dates but more illustrative of what would happen if trends continued.

The most recent re-running of the data points suggests that the worst scenario has been avoided but the more central timelines for a crisis are pretty much unchanged. Additional research has pointed to some other factors that might be included in the model—for instance, global temperature—but all agree on a central thesis: human welfare depends on several interacting factors and the current trends cannot be carried on indefinitely without a major problem.

My 1972 Review: Back to the Future

It is slightly amusing that I thought the argument over the environment was already old hat, complaining it had been going on “for three or four years now.” I said then the world was divided into ”environmentalists threatening doom at every turn and their critics promising technological salvation just around the corner.” From my perspective, this description hasn’t changed much. It’s like the last 50 years never happened. Apparently, no amount of accumulating data makes a difference.

This outcome is not at all inconsistent with my overall assessment in 1972:

I outlined the reasons then and the intervening years have not moderated those concerns.

Why We Can’t Address

The major problem remains there is no economic or political structure in which addressing global environmental issues is compelling. These problems are enormously complicated and are international in scope. Every one is responsible for the environment which, in real world terms, means no one is responsible. No unilateral action by a single country, or even a group of countries, will by itself make a difference at scale. We can argue if all joined hands and made the plunge, we could change the future. Possibly. The success of the Montreal Accord on chlorofluorocarbons shows it can be done. But how many of us can really imagine that happening on some as ubiquitous as fossil fuel? In the sphere of what needs to be done, the Paris Climate Accords were moderate and the world is well short of meeting its goals, whether measured by country or overall. (Or in the case of the United States simply refusing to participate, its idiot president insisting there is no climate danger.)

We all assume that among the world’s leaders, there will always be some who feel they can free ride on the efforts of others. And among the world’s citizens, the political lift will be much greater in developed countries because they will have to give more. One can argue that would be fair because developed countries have used more of the world’s resources and contributed more to the environmental problems as a function of their development. Undoubtedly true. But most of the people who would vote for that do not live in developed countries.

Some people understand the reality of the threat and figure they can make money now and leave the future to others. As early as 1977 Exxon executives knew with relative precision the impact of fossil fuels on global temperatures. Their response: obfuscate and sow endless doubt. They, and similar corporations, knew the score; they chose to not simply hide it, but deny it. More recently, the corporate titans haven’t even bothered to hide the facts. Turns out it is much easier to simply bribe the Republican party (and Democrats if necessary) to ignore the reality.

Another response, think Donald Trump, is to use the issue to divide and deflect. I don’t know what Trump really knows about the environment, but I know he has used environmental issues to attack Democrats and blame economic woes in certain working class areas on Democratic concerns about the environment. It is true that some of the needed environmental steps will erode jobs in some sectors. On the other hand, they will create new jobs. Trump has never understood, never wanted to understand because it doesn’t help him, that the role of a leader is to help a nation resolve the tradeoffs that are necessary for its long-term welfare.

Most people don’t think about environmental issues much. It’s simply too overwhelming. Faced with a problem that seemingly has no straightforward solution—and the effects of which seem some time off in the distance—people with lives to live simply tune out. They may, at some level, connect the extreme weather the country is experiencing with environmental problems, but they can’t draw a straight line (or even a crooked one) between anything they could do and the bad effects they are experiencing.

So What Now?

Assuming the Limits to Growth assessments are anywhere near correct—and all available evidence suggests they are–I don’t see any way to avoid stepping in some really nasty stuff.

Consequently, I think the most realistic imperative is to make sure we are investing enough in adaptation. I am not suggesting we give up on preventing environmental degradation. But I suspect by the time things get sufficiently bad that a critical mass of people stop fighting the issue, it will be very hard to stop the downward trends. What could have been done 50 years ago with modest pain will require Herculean efforts.

Since we are unable to commit to preventing the problem, we should at least be realistic about its nature. For functional purposes, the world has already blown past the 1.5 degree mark of the Paris Accords and we’re on our way to a global temperature increase of at least 2.0 degrees. We have seen the problems this causes. (While I was writing this, the air quality here in Chicago was well beyond hazardous due to smoke from record numbers of wildfires.) The is no reason to expect the future will not get worse.

Adapting to the changes already happening—actual, not forecast—will entail international, national, and regional efforts to respond to specific problems. I anticipate a subsequent post to further consider the issue of adaption.

In the meantime, just starting to address this will be politically complicated because it would require admitting that it is happening. It would also require rethinking revenue sources and reprioritizing expenses.

To the extent polls can be trusted, an overwhelming majority of the public would be fine with that. But there is a powerful group of people who don’t want to see that happening, in part because they think their wealth can buy them out of environmental issues.

The question is whether there are politicians with the skill and courage to capitalize on what the majority want, or are we going to continue to be ruled by leaders who have figured out how to profit from denying inconvenient truths.

Deterioration in Political Discourse Leads to Deteriorated Thinking

By Mike Koetting July 7, 2026

A recent Pew Center poll found Republicans were much more skeptical of emerging climate problems than Democrats. I wasn’t at all surprised—and I’ll bet you’re not either.

My second thought was to wonder why this should be. After all, if I asked a random sample of Chicagoans whether the White Sox will make the playoffs this year, I would not expect to see a marked difference in response by political parties. And while there are no end of uncertainties, the factual bases for arguments about environmental predictions are much stronger than predicting baseball outcomes. But here we are with political leaning outstripping other considerations.

Wasn’t Always So

In the 1970’s, as we first started to understand the problems we had unleased, the environment was a totally bi-partisan concern. Richard Nixon enthusiastically presided over the creation of the EPA. By 1997, there was starting to be a spread between Democrats and Republicans on core climate issues—whether climate warming was happening and whether it was caused by humans—but it was only a modest 8%. By 2024, that gap had climbed to 35%.

It’s hard to imagine a completely rational explanation for this sea change. It’s not like there has been news of substantially improving conditions.

It is true that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN-sponsored collection of scientists for assessing the climate situation, eliminated the worst scenario that previous projection models had included. But if there is any celebration there, it should be extremely modest. The “worst scenario” was exactly that. It assumed everything went as bad as could possibly be imagined. It was never considered particularly likely and even scientists who were concerned about where we are going have been pointing to its irrelevance for a number of years now. That is not to say, as Donald Trump has claimed, that the “IPCC admitted its own projections were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” Rather, in the context of updating model parameters, that are part of all sensible predictions, they acknowledged that not all the bad things that could possibly be imagined were happening. (They also acknowledged that not all the good things they had hoped for happened either.) Their overall conclusion remains quite troubling, and the most likely projected outcome is not far from the most likely outcome in the last model. In short, exactly opposite Trump’s assertion, they argue we are still on a path to a warmer world than can currently be imagined as sustainable.

More specific evidence of problems continues to mount. Icebergs are melting more quickly than predicted, ocean temperatures are rising, and heat waves are killing more and more people. These are measurements, not subjective opinions.

But that information seems less likely to reach Republicans. Take one of the most fundamentally objective measures—the actual temperature. The ten warmest years in the historic record are the last ten years. Only one year prior to 2004 was warmer than the coolest year in the following twenty-one years. There is an indisputable, steady climb in temperatures since 1850 and the rate of warming since 1982 is three times as fast as the previous 130 years.

The majority of Republicans simply deny this. In one 2024 poll, only 43% of people who identified themselves as Republican believed the world’s temperature has been increasing over the last 100 years. This is a decline from 76% of Republicans who in 2006 believed that temperatures were rising, despite the intervening twenty years including the largest rise in temperatures since we’ve been keeping detailed records.

How Does This Happen

The simple answer is the increased nature of tribalism in American politics, both in the general sense and as it specifically relates to environmental issues. On an issue-by-issue basis, there are specific factors that can be identified. In environmental issues, the fact that the non-elite media provide virtually no coverage of environmental issues, the fact that that the major media provide dramatically different coverage by general political leaning, or the fact that more than half of Americans get some or all of their news from social media, which is subject to no meaningful standard of accuracy, all make it easier for Republicans to tout memes removed from reality.

It is also the case that as a business decision, extractive industries have put their support behind the Republican party, Republicans, in turn, have reciprocated by obfuscating or simply denying scientific evidence. Republicans have also contributed significantly to the bottom lines of these companies by supporting policies to enrich them—either directly through various mechanisms or by weakening or eliminating regulations that would impact their business.

It is hard to overstate the role Donald Trump has played in accelerating this tribalism. It is particularly true for environmental issues—his ranting that climate change is a hoax, his open willingness to tailor policies to oil (even coal) for contributions and his relentless attack on instruments of government meant to address environmental issues.

But, as awful as he has been, I think it would be a mistake to blame it all on Trump. These issues are also structural. The increase in tribalism started much earlier. For instance, Republican desertion of climate issues has been a long, continual decline since Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House after defeating Carter. The direction became obvious in the 90’s when Newt Gingrich replaced substantive legislative staff with people devoted to the party and to “messaging”. Parties became national in scope and the cost of running for office virtually required more fealty to the central party brand, which in turn sharpened the divide between the two parties. All this is amplified by the Internet, making each party appear more extreme to their rivals. Leaders find it harder and harder to have discussions on complex issues. Polling suggests strongly that on the fundamentals of most issues, there is typically a core sentiment around some non-extreme solution. It has become too hard to get to that because statesmanship has been abandoned in favor of ever louder attempts to engage the base by demonizing the other side and carefully crafted messages to get a few more swing voters.

Consequences Are Serious

In the realm of environment, the most obvious causality of this retreat from reality is climate action itself. With half the country opposing environmental action as unnecessary, it is virtually impossible to pass legislation that addresses the issue. It’s even worse than that. The issue has become so divisive that Democrats have become reticent to even mention environmental issues, what one advocacy group calls “climate hushing”. There is abundant evidence of widespread concern about environmental issues, even among Republicans. But they don’t want to engage on this concern. As a think tank founded by centrist Democratic strategist Adam Jentleson put it, voters all think it is someone else’s problem, and, correspondingly, anything that impinges on them—or might impinge on them–is anathema. Their advice to candidates is to never mention climate change.

This is deleterious not simply because refusing to address an issue of this magnitude is a dereliction of representative government, but also because discussing issues is an essential part of resolving them. No one—and I mean no one—has a complete answer on this one. Democrats have some specific policy solutions. I have great sympathy for these, particularly as opposed to the corrupt and stupid Republican policies. But the Democratic policies are incomplete, frequently inconsistent, and typically overstate how much impact their solution will have. In effectively removing one of the greatest crises facing our society from the list of issues we can discuss, we are stoking the locomotive straight to hell. Literally.

Even more fatal, if such an expression is even possible, deciding that facts don’t matter and that honest discussion is impossible completely undercuts the idea of democracy as a way to run a government that will optimize the common good. It is probably true that the electorate has always been inclined toward simplistic answers. But the idea of representative democracy is that those who actually make decisions will foster an Enlightenment approach to problem solving, not throw that over for pandering. If facts, discussion, negotiation and compromise aren’t the basis of our government, then we are little better than primitive tribes yelling insults at each other across a big river.

This is not what the Founders risked lives and fortunes for.

The Impact of Government Is in the Details

By Mike Koetting June 23, 2026

As we approach the Fourth of July, there will be a great deal of celebration of the best ideals of democracy and the government that has sprung forth from our initial documents. Important as they are—particularly in these times when they are so severely threatened—I figure enough other people are writing about those. Instead, I use a particular case to illustrate how the broad policy visions of our democratic process get incorporated into specific policy choices and concrete decisions. The themes set direction; the specifics of these decisions determine the actual impact of government on people’s lives.

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Disposing of Coal Ash

Coal ash is the highly toxic residual product from burning lots of coal, mostly at the site of coal-burning utilities. I didn’t know what it was before an article in last week’s Chicago Tribune on the local impacts caught my attention. I assume most Americans know as little as I do. Turns out, coal ash is really nasty stuff. For a long time, no one paid any particular attention to it. Mostly it was simply spread around near where it was burned but a large amount was placed in specific dumps, often in pools to mitigate the toxicity. This came to public attention in 2008 when a retaining levee in Tennessee collapsed, releasing over one billion gallons of toxic sludge into nearby rivers.

Although regulations to address this issue were drafted within the year, numerous legal (and political) challenges delayed the actual adoption until 2015. However, within months of Trump taking office in 2017, the EPA moved to delay the enforcement of those rules. The pendulum swung the other way when Biden took office and, despite a blizzard of law suits, the EPA reversed the Trump 1-initiated delays in new rules–issued in April, 2024. Within the year, the EPA, now back under Trump, began backpedaling and, recently, proposed a substantial roll-back.

So what is the average citizen to make of this? On the one hand, concerns over high utility costs are widespread. It is true that requirements for remediation of coal ash dumps would require material costs and, in themselves, would add nothing to electric output. On the other hand, while I am by no means an expert on such things, I have not seen a single comment to the effect that coal ash is not as dangerous as described.

Who is best suited to determine what set of trade-offs yields the optimum results?

One theoretical construct is that within the administrative branch of government there are a core of experts relatively insulated from pollical influence who make such decisions. But that’s a very hard sell. In the first place, it is hard to get experts who understand the full set of implications and trade-offs. Environmental scientists who are well suited to decide how various levels of toxins in groundwater impact the surrounding population, may not be so good at determining the economic consequences of requiring various levels of clean-up. This leads to a sense, sometimes deserved, that the experts are so narrowly focused they can’t see the bigger picture.

From there, it is an easy hop to believe that elected officials, who have broader purviews, should make more of the decisions. The more democratic nature of such a process has appeal. Citizens don’t typically understand the pointillismic nature of governmental impacts on their lives and want elected officials to deal with broad sentiments. If they are feeling oppressed by rising costs, they want leaders to fix it. The details are not particularly important when they are casting votes.

However, in focusing on the “big picture,” political leaders can overlook details. But details are important. How concentrations of toxins from coal ash in the water supply impact the people using that water does make a difference. There is no way of avoiding the sisyphusian task of finding the best balance among competing goods, one policy at a time. At least in good faith efforts. If someone has decided that one goal or another should be allowed to run rough-shod over other goals, consequences be damned, decisions become easier, though rarely better in the long run.

The issue is further complicated in America by the role of the courts in determining administrative actions. The number and complexity of lawsuits on coal ash disposal is head spinning. Literally dozens of different courts have been involved in looking at one aspect or another of these regulations. It’s not at all clear whether courts are the best place to hash out such issues—most of the cases apparently get resolved on procedural issues (which are things lawyers and judges know a lot about) rather than substantive issues. And that’s before even considering the astounding amount of money involved—which leads to suspicions this approach tilts the process in the direction of those with more resources. With a large enough war chest you can keep most regulations at bay indefinitely, certainly long enough to get to a more friendly administration

What Is the Solution?

As usually the case, it’s easier to describe the problem than solve it.

In virtually every situation there will be competition among differing goals—in this case, safety for one group of people versus higher cost for a larger group. (There are those who like to skirt the zero-sumness by focusing on the earnings of the corporate owners. Fair enough, as far as it goes. Even in a perfectly socialist world, there would still be tension between production and safety. The entire history of industrialization provides graphic evidence.)

We like to think these issues are better settled “democratically”. But that is excruciatingly hard to put into practice. The idea of representative democracy gets strained when the number of technical decisions become so large—an inevitable consequence of greater population density and technological complexity. Elected representatives cannot be experts on the range of issues facing society, nor are their constituents particularly tolerant of complexities. Moreover, capital has apparently limitless funds for lobbying and we have allowed special interest groups to have an outsized role in elections. The voice of big money tends to paper over more nuanced technical expertise.

That said, there are two things that clearly help protect our society—a relatively independent civil service and a free, and local, media.

The Role of Civil Service

There is a strain of thought that wants to freely replace people administrating rules after elections. Their argument is that the election expressed the will of the people and therefore the elected should be allowed to put people in charge of all these rules who will carry out the promises they made in the campaign.

The argument is not without merit. As noted above, it is not uncommon for the unelected experts to become too narrowly focused or to become too entrenched in their ideas of how their particular piece of government should operate. Or they may have, consciously or unconsciously, become captured by special interests.

Nevertheless, I am of the strong opinion that the existence of an independent and largely permanent civil service is essential for a society to navigate, however imperfectly, between competing goals. It is appropriate that there are changes at the top of agencies after elections. But this will work better over the longer haul if supported by professionals who do not change with every election. Their experience and knowledge base will help avoid painful mistakes that someone with more ideology and less experience might make. (If DOGE had asked anyone, they might have known that cutting the portion of the Department of Agriculture devoted to preventing screwworms in our cattle wasn’t a great idea.)

I concede that creates a bias toward people who are more disposed to government intervention. Those who are more concerned about excess government interventions are less likely to choose a career in government. So be it. I believe in free enterprise and recognize that excessive regulation can impede good ideas. But I also know that capitalism trends toward common good only in the broadest sense…and only if is saved from its own impulses to maximize return at the expense of others. Politicizing civil service is a dangerous idea.

An Independent Media

It is equally important that there be an independent media to spotlight where the conflict of goals has gotten too far out of balance. This is more than a series of slogans and the consolidation of the media under the control of a few very wealthy families raises many alarm bells. The nation will be much worse off if those in power are no longer terrified to hear that crews from” Sixty Minutes” are in their lobby.

Local media is where issues that are impacting specific situations or groups of people get identified. It was an article in The Chicago Tribune on coal ash disposal in a local community that got me looking at the entire issue. Without that, I would never have given coal ash a thought. In that context, the serious loss of local media is particularly concerning. Perhaps local blogs will pick up some of the burden. For instance A City that Works in Chicago and the Political Peach in Atlanta are local blogs that provide detailed news on specific policies and, as such, contribute to focusing government on the real needs of citizens. But these are both products of urban areas that still have decent local media. I don’t know if there are similar efforts outside urban areas, where the loss of local media is the greatest.

Conclusion

While it is obvious that the actual impact of government on our lives is expressed through a series of incremental decisions, in the rhetorical windstorms around elections it is easily forgotten that each of these decisions involves specific trade-offs among divergent goals. As society becomes ever more densely integrated, these choices have ripple effects beyond the most obvious consequences. It takes conscious effort to develop mechanisms for addressing these concrete decisions in a way that best serves the entire population, not merely the loudest.

Invest in Coal?

By Mike Koetting June 4, 2024

I wasn’t planning on writing another blog on environmental issues so soon, but my interest was severely piqued when I saw a recent article in the Chicago Tribune with the headline:

Communities Being Urged to
Double-Down on Coal

I assumed this was surely not what it appeared to be but was a clever hook for some different kind of story. I was curious enough to look.

Nope. The story was pretty much as advertised. A little more complicated, but the headline was straight. A number of communities around the state who are currently getting their electricity from coal-burning plants are being asked to extend their commitments to coal into the 2050s. To be fair, part of the argument is that by extending their commitment, they would finance the development of carbon-capture technology so that by 2050 it would be “net zero”.

Posturing of Republican States a Planetary Threat

By Mike Koetting April 22,2024

My last post used property insurance to illustrate how climate change is already intruding on our day-to-day lives. When I started that post, I had the vague idea that this might be causing some softening of attitudes, even in Red states. Talk about misbegotten hopes!

Rather, the impact of these states pretending environmental threats are not man-made has a greater rippling effect than I anticipated.